Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(113)
Please let it be good news. Please let them be okay. Please . . .
Randi stands, paces across the room and back again. She smoothes the quilt on the bed where she was sitting, then looks at the portable crib next to it.
She should probably fold that up and put it away.
No. Not yet.
Maybe they’ll want to come back here when this is over. In fact, maybe she should change the bedding, here and in the other guest room, so that everything will be fresh and ready, just in case.
Ordinarily, it’s a job she’d leave for her housekeeper, but right now, she desperately needs something to do, something other than pace or brood.
She strips the crib and the bed and carries the bedding into the bathroom. After depositing it into a laundry basket there, she notices that the wicker wastebasket needs to be emptied. It’s full of crumpled tissues—probably Allison, wiping her tears. Her eyes were red and swollen this morning when she left.
On the verge of tears herself, Randi takes a plastic garbage bag from the sink cabinet and starts to dump in the contents of the wastebasket.
Something heavy falls into the bag. Randi reaches in and sees that it’s the E-ZPass tag from Allison’s SUV.
That means she’s most likely headed south or west—there are tolls on all the bridges. She doesn’t want anyone tracking her car, obviously, by checking to see where it was used, so she’ll pay cash.
Randi is about to toss the trash bag aside when she spots something else that isn’t crumpled tissue—something orange.
She fishes it out.
It’s a plastic bottle from the pharmacy. According to the label, it contains Dormipram, prescribed to James MacKenna.
The bottle is half full of pills.
Hearing the tremendous splash as the Jeep hits the water, Jamie turns and runs, heading straight for Mack, reveling in the startled dismay on the face of his foe.
He probably thinks I’m going to jump him.
Ah, but that won’t be necessary.
My work here is done, Jamie thinks gleefully.
He can see that the SUV’s motor is still running. How convenient.
All Jamie has to do is jump behind the wheel, drive away from here, and abandon the car somewhere. Maybe in the driveway of a deserted house, where no one will notice it for weeks, months.
By the time anyone finds it, Mack will have been arrested for drowning his children.
Who’s going to believe his crazy story about someone stealing them out from under his nose—in a car he rented himself?
Not the police.
Not the families of all those women whose bodies bore undeniable evidence of Mack’s DNA.
Not his lovely wife.
It’s over.
Allison has lost everything she had to lose, and as for Jamie . . .
I win.
I—
Too late, Jamie sees that Mack has a gun.
Torn, Rocky looks over his shoulder at the double doors leading back into the hospital, and then at the parking garage across from the entrance, where he left his car.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
The case is exploding; he just got word from Murph that a frantic Allison MacKenna reported to the cops down in Jersey that her husband has abducted their children, and yet . . .
Ange.
How can I leave her?
His phone, still clutched in his hand, buzzes yet again. He answers immediately. “Manzillo here.”
“Jack Cleary. I heard about the theft at the clinic. Good work. We’ve got the lab on it, checking for chemicals that would indicate cryopreservation.”
“You’ll find them,” Rocky says flatly.
“Even so—the theft could have been a coincidence.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Detective, even if it wasn’t, we’ve got the guy’s own wife saying he took the kids and they’re in danger.”
“She said that? Are you sure?”
“I didn’t talk to her myself, if that’s what you mean, but she said they’re in danger, and believe me—”
“How does she know?”
“That they’re in danger? I don’t know how she knows. But I know how I know. I’m inside the house right now.”
“Which house?”
“The MacKennas’ house on Orchard Terrace. The warrant came through a little while ago.”
“Good. What’d you find?”
“For a start, we found a home computer registered to MacKenna that was last used a couple of days ago to do an Internet search on Susan Smith.”
“Who the hell is Susan Smith?”
“Case down in South Carolina. It made national headlines fifteen, maybe twenty years ago? Young mother with two small boys strapped in the back of her car, says she was carjacked, but—”
“But she did it herself.” Rocky remembers and his stomach gives a sickening twist. “She drowned them—drove the car into a lake.”
“That’s right.”
Jesus. Rocky tilts his head back, closing his eyes.
“Our friend also did his homework on fast-acting sedatives,” Cleary goes on, “and he set up a car rental down in Jersey . . .”
Cleary goes on, filling in with details that make Rocky’s head spin with the realization that he needs to give it up and admit that for the second time in his career, his gut instinct is wrong.